Page 81 - The Wish Stream Year of 2022

It’s always difficult to describe a week of tough mountaineering to someone who wasn’t there. Articulating how we climbed 1000s of meters
in elevation, navigated treacherous scree slopes, battled punishing winds, and carefully ascended icy slopes, does no justice to how arduous the week was. Every step climbing the snowy gul- lies carried its own risk and consequences, with a slip resulting in a swift fall to the boulder field below. Our movement, perception, and focus were distilled down to a small portion of the mountainside, step-by-step climbing to the top, placing our crampons deliberately, and ice axes with purpose. This description sounds like an extract from an alpine climbing memoir, but this was the reality of our AT expedition, and it was fantastic. For five days we endured the taxing Scottish winter and were rewarded on the last day with a spectacular view of the snow-dusted Argyll mountains in the sunshine.
Ex CAMBRIAN FROSTBITE CADET was organ- ised with the ambition of delivering five high- quality mountaineering days, and it succeeded. The tough days on the hill were balanced by relaxing evenings in the hot tub debriefing the
day’s events, and provided the perfect venue to switch off and decompress from a tough Inter- mediate Term at Sandhurst. Our instructors, Tarquin and Nick, delivered top quality teaching, leaving us qualified and competent to head into the winter wilderness on our own expeditions. We often wished we’d organised a more relax- ing trip, or that we were somewhere warm and comforting, but we left our lodge on the last day feeling satisfied with our adventure, and with formative memories that we’ll draw on during the tough moments in our future careers.
Exercise CAMBRIAN FROSTBITE CADET
SANDHURST 79